7 minute read
CONFIDENCE MAN
If ever there were a group of people you could guarantee a good time with, it would be Confidence Man. That’s why, when an opportunity arises to chat with them - even if it’s on the other end of a crackly phone line and in two different countries, you do not say no. Capeesh?
And if you haven’t heard of Australia's biggest party band, aka Janet Planet, Sugar Bones, Reggie Goodchild, and Clarence McGuffie, the only simple explanation would be that you’ve taken a six-year hiatus from the internet and the last time you partied hard was at Fatboy Slim’s 2016 Glasto set.
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So, in the spirit of parties, and the release of ConMan’s second album Tilt, what better way to celebrate than getting them to design their dream bash? And what better tastemaker to orchestrate this extravagant soirée than Sugar himself? The man who so boldly declared that we’re all just animals with beautiful hair. (What I Like, track three from the album - it will be your new party anthem. Trust.)
“We’d have Grace Jones. I feel like she’s a centrepiece in any top level party. Then Nina Simone would be on piano, but it would be broken and she’d be getting really angry and yelling at it. And there’d be a full breakfast buffet that goes on for 24 hours just so people could grab a sausage to keep them going.” Smart.
“It would have to be on a private island as well, so not just any old riff raff. We don’t want them to stumble on in and kill the vibe. And it would be well guarded - there’d be armed guards. Or aardvarks?” It’s hard to decipher over the phone, but for such an eccentric band, heads would not turn if it was the latter.
What’s squaring up to be the album launch of the century is far from finished - and far from slowing down in its elaborateness. “It would be a completely nude party. But there’d be a giant pile of really expensive designer clothes just mounted in the middle of it. If you’re getting a bit cold, you can just chuck on a Gucci jacket - and whatever you want you can just take home at the end of the party.”
One can only presume that tiltyourself.com, the band’s geniously sarcastic merch site is sponsoring this mammoth event. With an ‘about me’ section that declares: “Boredom will never take us alive, or dead. Contort. Maximalise. Blow it up. Go beyond the monotony of the everyday,” you can’t deny that they’re completely rinsing this mantra with their contagiously ironic sense of humour. But that’s just what makes Confidence Man so great. Very rarely do you meet a band that doesn’t take themselves seriously - but really, genuinely mean it. It’s not just an act they put on to make people think they’re cool. They’re actually cool, and they can’t help it.
The way in which they’ve sonically levelled up from their debut, Confident Music for Confident People, (which, by the way, is an album that is welcome at many a party when the atmosphere needs to be taken up a notch) is very cool, too.
“I think we got deeper and deeper into the world of dance music through a whole bunch of different artists compared to the previous album. We just wanted to cast the net a bit further and try and go a bit bigger and wider with the sounds.” And it shows. While the tracks are still as subtle as Grace Jone’s wardrobe archive (an analogy they’ll probably very much resonate with) the band is happy to steer away from the standard pop length and give 90s-esque rave instrumentals just as much attention as they give their ridiculous (in the most loving way possible) storytelling.
“Relieve the Pressure is a favourite. I love the feel of it, and I love that we let ourselves go a little longer than the typical 3 to 4 minutes. We took it on its own little journey at the end. Basically, every time we would write a song, we would just let it go where it wanted. Like Toy Boy. We had a few different beats kicking around and the toy boy idea and concept, and Janet just called it a J. Lo slut jam one day. I think it’s an absolutely great explanation for the track. We wanted to crack the door a little further open to what ConMan songs could sound like. And there should be more J. Lo slut jams out there.”
The writing process also found the rave professionals upping their game on the live front. Which, if you’ve seen them live, it’s hard to imagine how they could possibly put on any more of a show.
“Janet can get everyone to dance. I’ve lived with her my whole life, and she’s always like ‘get the fuck up’ and grabs me by the ear - sort of beating me into submission. But she can just make a whole room start dancing. I don’t know what she does.” If you’ve seen their 2017 Golden Plains set on YouTube where Janet literally got thousands of hungover people to “get down” for a 2pm Sunday slot, you’ll know what he means.
“We just wanted to make it a 360° submersible experience. And we had so much time to plan it out and come up with all the new dances and gags and tricks and music. It was just endless days of getting drunk and being like ‘what if we do this?’ and just suggesting the most stupid ideas to each other. Also, we’ve got nothing else to do - we’re not playing instruments so we need to do something. We’ve got to make ourselves useful while we’re up there.”
Again, it’s the ambition of countless bands out there - to create such a spectacular experience as this, developing cryptic concepts that are purely invented to give the choreography an ‘artistic’ depth. But no. For Confidence Man, it’s just a convenience thing. It’s this nonchalance that captured the attention of Noel Gallagher, who is (arguably) a British icon - depending on your Gallagher brother preference. “The first time we met Noel was just before Covid, and we were playing a UK festival. A guy came backstage after one of our shows, introduced himself as Andy Barlow and was like ‘I’m U2’s producer and I saw your gig.’ He was a cool guy but we weren’t too sure. Every fucker says they’re U2’s producer. But we thought let’s hang out even if he’s not who he says he is. We stayed in touch and it turns out he actually was. He played all our stuff to U2 and they really liked it somehow which was bizarre.”
“They were doing a gig in Australia and they [U2] reached out and asked if we wanted to hang out after the show. Noel was supporting them, so afterwards, we went and met them at this hotel and it was a total headfuck. They were really sweet to us and we were just trying to treat them like normal people. And they are. They’ve all got problems and lives, except they’ve just got millions and millions and millions of dollars.”
Fast-forward from the night in the hotel with the normal people who just have millions and millions and millions of dollars, Confidence Man has bagged themselves a support slot with the man himself on June the 15th at the Eden Project. So artists, listen up. It seems like if you want to make it in this industry, you’ve got to really try hard to not take it seriously. And it’s a method that has obviously worked up until now if you’re someone who measures success with almost 40K followers on Instagram, an Australian Independent Record Award, millions of streams on Spotify, a string of major festivals under their belts, and a soon-to-be support slot with one of the Oasis frontmen. Not bad, really.
And when met with the generic question of what does the rest of 2022 hold - which, if you’re a fan is a genuine question that will literally help you plan your year around the FOMOworthy antics of Confidence Man - it can be verified that you will not be let down.
“We’re a month through this three-month tour, but we’ve still got a whole bunch of Europe and UK shows and festivals. All we want to do right now is get out and play these shows and see our fans who we just fucking miss so much and who are the best fans ever. We just want to dance and party around the world. That’s it.”
